One War too Many
by Twistedmaniac
Summary: NOTE: THIS STORY HAS REDONE DUE TO SHEER AWFULNESS. Draco is a vampire working under Voldemort searching to murder his past, but it seems someone beat him to it. Harry, weary of the Light, finds himself fighting for the Dark...and drinking blood.


Story title: One War too Many

NOTE: THIS STORY IS BEING REDONE DUE TO SHEER AWFULNESS. Draco is a vampire working under Voldemort searching to murder his past, but it seems someone beat him to it. Harry, weary of the Light, finds himself fighting for the Dark...and drinking blood.

A/N: Hello, everyone. I've gotten some reviews that are wondering what happened to the rest of this story, and some that thought I'd already ended it with chapter seven, I think it was. Well, no. I just abandoned it. And now, I'm going to try and fix it because it seems that some people are still interested. The problem is that I have no idea what sort of plot I was trying for when I originally devised it. I only know that seriously, this story is awful. Hopefully the new version will be an improvement.

Harry Potter awoke with a start. Despite what he knew to be an early, silent hour, the urge to yawn died with his pounding heart. Listening as he tried to figure out what had awoken him, that unsteady beat was all that he could hear. His ears strained through the dark, trying to detect the slightest noise that did not belong.

It wasn't his scar. His nightmares hadn't been as bad as some nights. The night was still and silent. He looked across the small room to see Hedwig ruffling her feathers and hooting softly. She would not be still, as though something had disturbed her, too.

Harry's thoughts immediately turned for the worst as he tried to think of who would be in this room. This run-down shack was filled to the dirty brim with charms and spells to confuse and mislead any travelers that stumbled upon it. He didn't even look like himself, having drunk the blood of a Chimera. Now that had been an ordeal. But he never looked quite the same to anyone, including wizards, so they would never recognize him, even in passing. He would never appear the same twice. He touched his arms for the characteristic raised temperature, just to be sure that he had taken his monthly "medication". They were hot to the touch, unnaturally so. He hadn't forgotten. No one could have found this place. No one knew where he was. He would not even look like himself. He wasn't exactly sure what—he could see himself just fine, as Harry Potter, every time he caught his reflection.

But then, what had awoken him if there was no one here? For there could be no flaw in the spells guarding his temporary "home", no mistake in his own disguise. Unease settled into the very pit of his stomach and the first pulls of fear began to plague him. Was it something powerful enough? Gods protect him if the chimera's mate had somehow known who he was. No, that was ridiculous. He hadn't even killed the beast, and it had been mate-less. He leveled his breathing, taking care to make no noise. In a night this silent, even breath could give a man away.

Something was different. Something was wrong. Harry was momentarily grateful that he no longer needed glasses—his eyesight was perfect now, almost certainly due to the Chimera blood. If anything, it was too good. He tended to see more detail than he had before, than he had previously wanted to. Especially in some of the gruesome things that the war forced everyone to look upon.

Instead of those now useless spectacles, his wand was what he reached for. Extending his fingers, he kept his eyes wide open, even though all he could see was darkness. A complete black that added to the near static-like silence. The price of a complete lack of even muggle lights. His fingers brushed that old, familiar texture, reassured by its…

That something that was different and wrong darted across the room too fast for him to react, too fast to see even if there had been light. Flesh bowed and there was a sharp crack as his index finger bent to press into the back of his wrist. It was an almost elegant bow, if unnatural, and Harry could not appreciate it one bit. The other could.

Cotton was suddenly filling his mouth and eyes, in an attempt to swallow his strangled scream of pain. His pillow. It still smelled faintly of the scent of his hair when it was clean and freshly washed. Harry bit into the cotton, as a hand still ground it into his face. The pillow was the insult to the injury—he would not make another noise, even though he could feel where his bone had snapped and torn through skin.

Harry was no stranger to pain, from Skele-Grow to the Cruciatus Curse. He hadn't grown any less stubborn with the years, either, and now, he swallowed the pain. It did not go down easy, like swallowing a mouthful of large, uneven pebbles. But the pain was not important, and he forced that knowledge through to his nerves. Survival, above all. Finger, later. His priority was how to get out of this and who it was that was assaulting him. But he was scared as well. Who the fuck could move that fast? It wasn't human, whatever it was. Who the fuck could so much as get through his wards? That thought was far more unsettling.

"Be still," hissed a low and perfectly masculine voice. "Do you want the humans to come running?"

Harry shook his head vigorously, beginning to have to gasp for breath. The pillow did not allow for any amount of air whatsoever.

How the voice even knew that a scream would alert the Order—that if he so much as yelped, it would go straight to Sirius' old house and the Order would be here within the moment—Harry did not know. He did know that he was not dealing with a wizard, and if he was, Voldemort had just better pray that he—for it sounded very much like a male—was on his side.

"If I take it away, will you shut up?" the voice was slow, careful, as though speaking to one of somewhat lesser intelligence. Harry had the strange impression that it was choosing different words than it would normally speak, trying to bring itself down to a more contemporary, human level. Another unsettling thought. This moment was abundant with them.

Harry nodded several times, blackness beginning to smother him. He had not been able to take a breath before his short scream had been smothered—it had been that fast. The pillow was taken away and he took deep gulps of air to ease his aching lungs. It was disappointing how little it took to pass out when one has not inhaled prior to suffocation. Not that that even began to compare to the pain in his mangled finger. He gave it a quick glance, instinctively, and wished that he could reach his wand. He still couldn't see a thing.

Harry froze as his wand was casually thrown out of the open window. It was the sort of paralysis that overtook one when you have been caught for certain, in the best of times, and in the worst of times, when you are just well and truly fucked.

His eyes had adjusted once more to the complete lack of light, widening, even though it was no different to close his eyes than to have them open. Still, for the first time, he had futilely glanced up. And then he could see. He could make out bright eyes, pale eyes that reminded him of the storm-gray waters of the ocean as it swallows ships whole. A roiling, tempestuous gray that was broken only by a ring of night and a small pupil. Frightening and lovely in a wild, unrestrained sort of way, they were the first thing that caught his eye. There was something about them that went beyond hue and ballads of beauty and the usual prose about eyes. Something that wasn't beautiful at all, and he couldn't place it.

This was not someone with anything left to loose.

The candle at his bedside was lit, without a word to be spoken or so much as a gesture. Several more candles sparked, lighting the room and revealing Harry's attacker.

A barrage of visuals assaulted him. Skin, so pale it should have shown in the darkness, and angular features that were sharp, delicate, and strong all at once. It was not a face meant for kind words or compromise. White-blond hair hung in strands past his ears, not too long, only the kind that implied that the owner had simply not taken the time to cut it in some time. It was the features that brought back past images. Ferrets and Crabbe and Goyle, taunts and duels past. Easy, mundane things. A time that would never come back, that had seemed so deadly serious and important at the time. A time that mattered little, meant nothing now.

A cultured hand casually slapped him. It had seemed so light, and yet it rocked Harry's head to the side, stinging and promising headaches to come.

"Do you mind if I begin? Or are you still gawking?" the voice's tone had not changed very much in the years, at least. It was still wry and knowing, infuriating and silken smooth all at once.

"Oh, gods," was all Harry could think to say. He thought that maybe he said it again, but he wasn't listening.

Malfoy waited patiently. He had plenty of time to spare.

"Malfoy. Please tell me you're not—," Harry considered that something had taken his shape, his essence, his voice. But something in his dismissed the thought, reasonable as it was. It was him, it simply was. "You are. Draco Malfoy."

"Yes?"

"Dumbledore spent three years looking for you," Harry half-whispered, the pain of his finger showing only in the tightness of his facial muscles. If his voice was a little hoarse, than it might have been excused by shock.

"Missed me?" Draco asked ironically.

"What happened?" Harry was aghast, unable to even consider taking the bait. He had been among those who searched for him when the Death Eaters had more or less seemed to melt away—many had been killed. Apparently they had missed one, as they'd always suspected. It had been declared, without any confidence, that he was dead. Dumbledore had never believed it.

"Does it matter?" Draco asked rhetorically. "I would think you would be more concerned with the here and now."

Harry hesitated, but only for a moment. "You're working for him, then."

"Yes, but not like you assume I am," Draco told him.

"How did you find me?"

"Listen, Potter. I've come to kill you," Draco said calmly. "Let's just keep focused.

"I am going," he said, with a deadly weight of calm so heavy that it chilled the room, "To rip out your throat. No one will ever know what happened."

Shivers went up Harry's spine. The way he said it; it went beyond cold. In eyes that were long beyond fear and life, Harry saw that he would do it. It was what he had come for, and he would leave with Harry dead. That was all.

"Say goodbye, Potter," Draco whispered in his enemy's ear. It was too intimate—the fact that he was shadowing Harry's body with his own slender, cat-like frame instead of simply standing beside him. The words of ice and near-bloodless lips at his ear. He had not fed in a long time. He had been anticipating this.

"No," Harry said, stupidity replacing his every cell. Panic, like there were magic words to stop this and he simply couldn't find them. "Why now? And what _are _you?" he added, eyes unsure, even among his desperation.

Draco sat back with a sigh, so he was sitting on Harry's thighs. He was light, as though he was missing too many things that would identify him as human. And he was, in a different sense.

"I am a vampire. Yes, I am going to suck your blood. Yes, I do get off on it. And no," Draco said, laughter in his eyes and voice, "I'm not at all ashamed."

Harry tried to speak, but he couldn't think for the life of him what to say. What could anyone say to that?

"Anything else?"

Harry thought frantically. "Why? Why me? Just because I was on the opposing side and you don't like me?"

"Harry," Draco said, descending. His eyelids were lowered, lips caressing every word. "It's because I like you. I like you very much."

It was too close. Conversations were not meant to take place nose to nose. It was more than close enough for Harry to see the shining white of Draco's canines. They were not muggle-movie large, the bogus fangs that would in reality be too big for any vampire's mouth. They simply looked incredible sharp, and that was all that his numbed mind registered.

"I'm not ready to die." Harry said, trying to bite out the words so he didn't reveal just how frightened he was. "I have to find them!"

Harry gritted his teeth as Draco added just a little pressure to his mangled finger and lifted his head, further breaching propriety to convey his point. "I…can't…die yet! I promised them."

Draco Malfoy stared right back into those famous eyes and smiled. "Is that so?"

"You know where they are, don't you? He has them, you're working for him, you've got to!" Harry said, unable to just lie back and die. Apparently it was one of his strengths. It generally just annoyed the hell out of whoever was trying to kill him and caused him more pain, but it had worked alright for him, so far.

Draco didn't want to talk about his stupid friends. He'd never liked any of them, especially Weasley. And he didn't like that Harry was thinking of them. He'd have to divert his attention to other matters.

The vampire lowered his head. He was through with speaking. If Harry wasn't going to listen, then he wasn't going to talk. He had more effective methods of catching people's attention anyhow.

A/N: You better believe I require reviews. I have several billion other stories, so I need to know which ones are liked and which are not. So…about you getting a second chapter. ((has given up pretending to be nice))


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